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No, it wouldn't. It would be economically, socially and morally disastrous, especially for the poor, as we'd no longer generate enough wealth to pay for any social care. It's a dislike for those who earn more than you dressed up as concern for the poor.

Err, I think having a progressive tax system - eg instead of 40% for anything above £40k, having 50% for £100k+, 60% for £250k+, 70% for £1m+ or whatever would surely generate MORE wealth to pay for social care. Obviously you need to get the balance right to not put it at a level where anyone wealthy will leave the country, but I think a lot more can be squeezed out of the wealthy to benefit society than right now.. in the Scandinavian states the wealthiest pay much, much more tax, and the country's education, healthcare, equality is fantastic.

This depends what financial commitments they already have. You can't have a £2,000,000 house (and suitable mortgage) and then suddenly think "Oh, you know what, I'll take a pay cut to £60k as I'll be fine". Basically, you're talking crap.

Your statement is far too sweeping. Living in Central London, attempting to buy anything nice to live in is going to be impossible on much less. The money put into the economy by the high earners accounts for far more than you might think - taking this away would be disastrous.

I cannot believe you're telling me £100k is not enough for a comfortable living!! NOBODY needs more than £100k to live. Yes you won't get your holiday home, or 4 expensive cars, or send 4 kids to Eton, but put it into perspective, those are relatively unnecessary things. Why do you need a £2m house, you can have a nice, 4 bedroom family home in a nice leafy suburb of zone 2/3 for £750k-1m - mortgage easily affordable on a £100k salary. Would be much more beneficial for society if a bigger bulk of any surplus over £100k went to help those in greater need than the ~40% that currently does.

And as successful gamblers they make a lot of money. Although I think its a tad more complicated than just gambling.

Haha, you have to be kidding! What portfolio managers and prop traders do is pretty much gambling, often with less research / thought than a horse-racing punter at Ladbrokes!

In normal markets, analysts use fundamental analysis to value stocks, commodities to determine what are good investments. Its young university graduates doing this, it's not difficult (the main valuation methodology is called 'DCF', which is A-Level Maths standard calculations), which they then feed to their portfolio manager. It takes 1-3 hours to analyse a stock properly.

Meanwhile in these crazy markets, fundamentals count for jack shit, and it is very much tossing a coin. Most people did not expect Lehman Brothers to go bankrupt, they expected someone to buy it but nobody had any clue the valuation (just like when JPMorgan bought Bear for $2, then suddenly upped it to $10 - a massive 500% difference) - so people were either betting 'long' or 'short' depending on what they guessed (pure guesswork, acquistion values can be anything) the price per share buyout would be higher or lower than current trading levels.

This week exactly the same thing - people purely gambling / speculating that Washington Mutual, Wachovia etc will go down - and its impossible to forecast whether or not a competitor will buy them out, if so for what price, or if it goes bust. The last month has been almost pure gambling / speculation on zero fundamentals.

As you can see, I do know my stuff, so all these pathetic insults that people like me are jealous of the wealthy is bollocks. I could have easily got a job as an investment banker, asset stripper, prop trader after graduating with my credentials, but chose something that isn't morally repulsive instead.

As for the cleaners/brain surgeons argument, I absolutely, absolutely agree that people who have worked harder to get better qualifications, and whose job creates more 'value', deserve to be paid more. That's fine. It's just the extent in banking land - where some spivs can get a £120k salary and £3.5m annual bonus for gambling, non-intellectual roulette spinning basically, whereas the people in the back/middle office who're also working hard processing these trades, if it weren't for them the whole system wouldn't work, get £35k and no bonus - less than 1% their front-office prick counterpart, is grossly unfair. Having a bit more 'robbing the rich to feed the poor' redistribution within a firm, and (slightly?) higher taxation %s further up the pay ladder, would hugely solve the current mess.

This week exactly the same thing - people purely gambling / speculating that Washington Mutual, Wachovia etc will go down - and its impossible to forecast whether or not a competitor will buy them out, if so for what price, or if it goes bust.

another one bites the dust, not just a coincidence their website was down for maintenance this weekend...now JPM owns BSC and WAMU, who are they going to buy next? CDS bubble is about to burst.

I cannot believe you're telling me £100k is not enough for a comfortable living!! NOBODY needs more than £100k to live. Yes you won't get your holiday home, or 4 expensive cars, or send 4 kids to Eton, but put it into perspective, those are relatively unnecessary things. Why do you need a £2m house, you can have a nice, 4 bedroom family home in a nice leafy suburb of zone 2/3 for £750k-1m - mortgage easily affordable on a £100k salary. Would be much more beneficial for society if a bigger bulk of any surplus over £100k went to help those in greater need than the ~40% that currently does.

No it wouldn't be at all beneficial.

People would start leaving in their droves as the system you're basically proposing is to punish success and succesful people which doesn't exactly encourage people to strive to do well now does it?

And, guess what, most people won't like that. So all you'd be left with is a rule with no-one to apply it to as they would have either all left or found new and more ingenious ways to channel their income so they avoid paying most of the tax.

I suggest you take a good hard look at the world in which we live and ask yourself whether your half-baked ideas are really anything more than that.

People would start leaving in their droves as the system you're basically proposing is to punish success and succesful people which doesn't exactly encourage people to strive to do well now does it?

And, guess what, most people won't like that. So all you'd be left with is a rule with no-one to apply it to as they would have either all left or found new and more ingenious ways to channel their income so they avoid paying most of the tax.

I suggest you take a good hard look at the world in which we live and ask yourself whether your half-baked ideas are really anything more than that.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Look at some facts -

- Countries like Denmark, Sweden, Finland have some of the highest rates of tax in the world for the wealthy. And yet there's plenty of millionaires who live there, happy to see their money well-distributed for a lovely, equal country with good education and health standards across the board.

- As it is Britons can pay fuck all tax if they fuck off to Dubai, Hong Kong or Singapore. Quite a few people do that, but the vast majority don't. The vast majority of British nationals in the City of London have a UK bank account and pay their 40% tax without offshore structuring. Changing the scale a few % eg 50% threshold at level x won't heavily change that.

- And so what if some people started leaving? There's currently 100 people applying for every investment banking job in London. There's still plenty of talented people who'd happily beg for a coveted position with a £40k starting salary and pay that higher tax rate when it comes. OK so you'll get someone with a Warwick 2.1 not an Oxford 1st, so what, realistically the difference in talent will be minimal in the workplace.

- Basically, not every wealthy person is a greedy, selfish cunt who sees taxes as 'daylight robbery' or thinks they're being 'punished for being successful', what a load of shit. Many of us (yes, I earn over £80k a year, bet you wouldn't have guessed that) would much rather see needless, surplus, excess money we make go to better use than our own pockets. Personally I give a good chunk of it away; higher taxes for the wealthy would overall make Britain a nicer, fairer place without the sickening wealth disparity we see. Again I go back to the banking example - how is it fair a front-office spiv makes £4m a year, whilst a middle office guy makes £40k a year. They are probably both just as qualified - good university degree to break into either these days, they probably work as hard in the office, same hours. Yes the front-office guy is a revenue generator but that does not warrant earning 100 TIMES as much!!

Does make you think when people are using phrases like 'Well it wasn't as big a percentage drop as we saw in 1929' - 777.70 points down in the end, the FTSE's gonna go like Richard Hammond in a jetcar at this rate.

you're right the comparisons are getting uglier by the day....the irish market was down 12% today and will probably gap down huge tomorrow the way US tanked this evening, absolute carnage in the financial sector.

Can someone give me in a nutshell the reasons behind so many Congressmen being against the rescue plan? And why so many of them Republicans? Taxes in the US were not going to be raised to pay for it were they?

It's sounding liek pure old fashioned ideology at its heart. Some people are claiming Republicans were offended by some speeches or some peoples tone of voices in discussion but I can't imagine they could vote no for that reason. So really, strip away most of it and it seems to me it's that most Republicans don't believe in state intervention in the market and that they should find their own natural balance.

Of course most aren't going to say that and as far as I can tell the Republicans were desperately trying to get enough votes but also allow as many of their members to vote no, looks like the maths was wrong - hence their anger at Democrats who voted no (who I think had more objection to the idea of bailing out big business) - they thought the democrats had more votes than they did and let too many Republicans slip.

To be honest though, there's been, what, 350 billion injected into the markets across the world in the last couple of days and it's made no difference. If they were hoping 700 billion was going to instantly change the market's confidence long term then I think the chance may have passed now.

From my understanding its a mixture of people (both Republican and Democrat) wanting to punish banks for their own mistakes (for different reasons perhaps), complaints that businesses are being rescued while homeowners aren't (again both Democrat and Republican - though that may have been addressed by the tax holiday) and also political posturing - it may be the best thing to do, but its not playing well with voters and there's an election coming up.

I guess that they'll put through another bill, but trying to address the concerns of legislators, though I'm not sure whether it might have to wait for a new President, Bush is more lame duck than most outgoing Presidents and just can't strong arm relucant members (of either party)

the bill was rejected because it was perceived as a bailout for reckless banks at the taxpayer's expense, which isn't far off the truth and there was a lot of bipartisan grassroots opposition. i expect a second draft will be put to congress but it may not happen until the dems get in.

I cannot believe you're telling me £100k is not enough for a comfortable living!! NOBODY needs more than £100k to live. Yes you won't get your holiday home, or 4 expensive cars, or send 4 kids to Eton, but put it into perspective, those are relatively unnecessary things. Why do you need a £2m house, you can have a nice, 4 bedroom family home in a nice leafy suburb of zone 2/3 for £750k-1m - mortgage easily affordable on a £100k salary. Would be much more beneficial for society if a bigger bulk of any surplus over £100k went to help those in greater need than the ~40% that currently does.

Clearly you have no actual idea how much that salary and mortgage would cost.

To put it in perspective, a 100K salary with a 5% pension contribution (which is a conservative contribution) would net you on a monthly basis -

Once again dunc, you have just proven you not only have zero knowledge about the topic, but don't even bother to research it! You just have the typical attitude of someone who hates white collars and is blinded by salary figures.

I live in a regular 3 bed terrace house in South Wales Valleys and mortgage comes in at not far off 570 a month, my outgoings excluding debts to keep the house running is around 1800 !!!! That covers food, petrol, car insurance, school dinners, etc, but it's very expensive to live these days, especially with a family!

You'll notice about 35K of the salary goes back into the system!!! i.e. pays for benefits, NHS etc.

Laughably, jobs like that will always come with private health insurance etc but people don't care about that.

Once again dunc, you have just proven you not only have zero knowledge about the topic, but don't even bother to research it! You just have the typical attitude of someone who hates white collars and is blinded by salary figures.

I live in a regular 3 bed terrace house in South Wales Valleys and mortgage comes in at not far off 570 a month, my outgoings excluding debts to keep the house running is around 1800 !!!! That covers food, petrol, car insurance, school dinners, etc, but it's very expensive to live these days, especially with a family!

You'll notice about 35K of the salary goes back into the system!!! i.e. pays for benefits, NHS etc.

Laughably, jobs like that will always come with private health insurance etc but people don't care about that.

Lots of jealously if you ask me.

Regardless of how much the mortgage on a 700k house costs, if you think 100k is not enough to provide comfortable living I fear you are either a bit dettached from reality, or your definition of comfortable is rather different from most other people's.

As an educated guess, I would say that at least 90% of the working force is on less than 100K. Yet many of those would say they have a comfortable level of living. I know I do, and when I don't it's because I've been a bit too credit card-happy or carefree.

All this hard suffering 100k worker would have to do to ease his 'difficulties' would be to aim for a slightly more affordable house to start with and them climb the property ladder. It works for most other people, including those who are on far lower wages.

Honestly CoT, 100K is a massive salary, and one that will provide for a very comfortable living indeed to anyone whose name isn't Wayne Rooney. We'd all like to own massive estates in the country with a Bentley on the drive, but I'd call the life I live- own flat with garden, own car, a few foreign holidays and breaks per year, good food and wine- as very comfortable indeed. Indeed, more comfortable than millions of people sadly could afford. This life is provided by a combined wage between my partner and I that is well below 100k.

Once again dunc, you have just proven you not only have zero knowledge about the topic, but don't even bother to research it! You just have the typical attitude of someone who hates white collars and is blinded by salary figures.

I live in a regular 3 bed terrace house in South Wales Valleys and mortgage comes in at not far off 570 a month, my outgoings excluding debts to keep the house running is around 1800 !!!! That covers food, petrol, car insurance, school dinners, etc, but it's very expensive to live these days, especially with a family!

You'll notice about 35K of the salary goes back into the system!!! i.e. pays for benefits, NHS etc.

Laughably, jobs like that will always come with private health insurance etc but people don't care about that.

Lots of jealously if you ask me.

You beat me to it - agreed there is no way you could afford A £750k mortgage on £100k.

Err, I earn £80k, and that's going to go up. Probably more than your good self. No jealousy whatsoever involved. And no, I didn't bother to calculate the cost of a £1m property. Because its completely irrelevant - Aladdin above sums up my sentiments perfectly. 97% of the country survive fine on (usually, 4-5 times) less than a £100k salary. Most people have a comfortable life on a modest salary enough to raise a family fine. Why the fuck do you need a fucking £1m property? Needless, pure greed. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks even a £100k salary wouldn't warrant a comfortable life, it is more than enough for everything you could possibly want. Right now on my salary I could easily have a partner and children. On my own its just silly so I give a lot away to charity, also save a bit for a rainy day.

Err, I earn £80k, and that's going to go up. Probably more than your good self. No jealousy whatsoever involved. And no, I didn't bother to calculate the cost of a £1m property. Because its completely irrelevant - Aladdin above sums up my sentiments perfectly. 97% of the country survive fine on (usually, 4-5 times) less than a £100k salary. Most people have a comfortable life on a modest salary enough to raise a family fine. Why the fuck do you need a fucking £1m property? Needless, pure greed. I feel sorry for anyone who thinks even a £100k salary wouldn't warrant a comfortable life, it is more than enough for everything you could possibly want. Right now on my salary I could easily have a partner and children. On my own its just silly so I give a lot away to charity, also save a bit for a rainy day.

Dunc - where do you live? Not being nosey, but where I live, you are going to struggle to get anything decent two bedrooms and upwards for under half a million. A £1 million property (or apartment, as it is more likely to be) is not extravagant at all.

Dunc - where do you live? Not being nosey, but where I live, you are going to struggle to get anything decent two bedrooms and upwards for under half a million. A £1 million property (or apartment, as it is more likely to be) is not extravagant at all.

It is outside London I reckon. Obviously it depends where you live but for joe average like me £1m is an incrompehensible amount of money.

It is a pile of cash, and more than I can afford, certainly - but living in some parts of Central London, it isn't unrealistic in the slightest. Dunc seems to be missing this point.

Well yea my brother bought some flats in hong kong as an investment and they basically quadrupled in value in three years to more expensive than london prices. This was about 10 years ago though. It is all about the location.

Well yea my brother bought some flats in hong kong as an investment and they basically quadrupled in value in three years to more expensive than london prices. This was about 10 years ago though. It is all about the location.

Dunc - where do you live? Not being nosey, but where I live, you are going to struggle to get anything decent two bedrooms and upwards for under half a million. A £1 million property (or apartment, as it is more likely to be) is not extravagant at all.

Not in Chelsea, Kensington, or Mayfair it isn't. There are dozens of other areas in London that are perfectly nice and just as safe and pleasant where properties cost a lot less.

I didn't say 100K couldn't be comfortable, I WASNT THE ONE WHO BROUGHT UP THE MILLION POUND PROPERTY DUNC - You fuckin moron. So don't start f-ing and blinding at me.

Of course 100K will give you a comfortable life! But it wouldn't be an infinite amount of money, and if you do live in parts of London as g_angel said, then it's not an insane amount to pay for property (especially closer to the 750K mark)

It is a pile of cash, and more than I can afford, certainly - but living in some parts of Central London, it isn't unrealistic in the slightest. Dunc seems to be missing this point.

Mate YOU'RE missing the point!!! Yes Kensington, Chelsea and Mayfair are expensive. So fucking what? Why do you need to live there? Only a complete twat would be like "Oh I can only possibly live in SW1, the rest of the country is VILEEE". Total bollocks.. fyi I live in the square mile, near St Pauls, lovely, clean, safe place, and my 800ft 2 bedroom apartment cost me £430k (and is probably worth less now!). You can get a nice 3-bedroom house in London in a safe clean nice place for under £750k, and raising a family, paying the mortgage etc is comfortably affordable on £100k/yr or under. Thinking £100k's not enough because it doesn't get you somewhere in Mayfair or South Ken is just pure greed, there's absolutely no need to have that #1 most expensive place in London. Proven given plenty of families get on more than comfortably with a combined salary of £40-50k.